Lloyd’s mind, a grandmaster-level chess engine, raced to process the new, catastrophic variable that had just strode into his command tent. Captain Graph and his contingent of fifty household guards were not an offer of aid; they were a complication, a Trojan horse delivered with a polite bow. He ruthlessly analyzed his uncle's possible motives, his mind branching into a dozen different scenarios, each more dangerous than the last. The most charitable interpretation, the one a more trusting man might have considered, was that this was a purely political stunt. After his humiliating public defeat at the family summit, Rubel was desperate to rehabilitate his image. Arriving on the scene of a major crisis with supplies and soldiers, framed as an act of noble duty, was a perfect piece of political theater. It would make him look dutiful, concerned, and loyal—all the things he was not. A more cynical, and far more likely, possibility was that Rubel was here to observe. To gather intelligence. To watch Lloyd’s response to the crisis, looking for weaknesses, for signs of incompetence he could later exploit. Or worse, he could be here to actively sabotage the containment effort, to ensure the plague spread just a little further, to make the main family branch, and by extension Lloyd and his father, look weak and incapable. A few “accidental” breaches of the quarantine, a batch of “contaminated” supplies—it would be so easy to orchestrate. But the most terrifying theory, the one that made the hairs on the back of Lloyd’s neck stand up and a cold knot of dread form in his stomach, was that Rubel himself was connected to the plague. The timing was too perfect. The sudden appearance too convenient. Could his uncle, in his desperate, festering ambition, have been the one to unleash this horror? Could he have made a pact with the very demonic forces Lloyd had just discovered in the well? Was he here not to help, but to control the narrative, to watch his experiment unfold, and to destroy any evidence that might link back to him? Every scenario was a minefield. The man was a known traitor, a proven conspirator, and now he had inserted fifty of his own armed men into Lloyd’s operation. But refusing their "aid" was not an option. He played out that scenario in his mind and saw the immediate, disastrous consequences. To publicly spurn a high-ranking nobleman offering help during a major humanitarian crisis would be political suicide. It would make Lloyd look arrogant, paranoid, and petty. It would be a story that would spread through the capital like wildfire: the Arch Duke’s son, more concerned with old family grudges than the welfare of his dying people. It was a perfect trap, and he had no choice but to walk into it with his eyes wide open. A cold, professional mask, as hard and as impassive as forged steel, settled over Lloyd’s features. He had to play the game. “Your master’s generosity is commendable, Captain,” Lloyd said, his tone perfectly level, betraying none of the furious calculations raging in his mind. He gestured to the maps on the table, not the detailed one of the village, but a larger one showing the surrounding territory. “Your timing is fortuitous. As you can see, my own forces are stretched thin securing the inner cordon and preparing the cleansing teams for entry. The real danger now is a panic from the neighboring villages. I need a reliable, experienced commander to manage the outer perimeter, to enforce the quarantine not just on Oakhaven, but on the entire region. Your men are veterans; they are perfect for the task.” It was a brilliant counter-move, a piece of strategic jujitsu. He accepted their help, praised their skill, and gave them a mission that was both critically important and strategically isolating. He was placing them on the outermost ring of the operation, miles from the village itself, far from the evidence in the well, and completely removed from the heart of his scientific and military investigation. They would be a useful buffer, a wall against the outside world, but they would be a wall he controlled. They would be kept at arm's length, under the watchful, and very suspicious, eyes of his own loyal soldiers. He was using his enemy’s own forces as a cage, simultaneously containing them and putting them to work. Graph accepted the assignment with a slight, almost imperceptible nod. His scarred face was an unreadable mask. If he was disappointed by the remote posting, if he recognized that he had been masterfully outmaneuvered and exiled from the main event, he showed no sign of it. He was a professional soldier, and he had his orders. “It will be done, my lord,” he said, his voice flat. He gave another short, correct bow and turned, melting back into the night as silently as he had arrived. The moment the tent flap fell shut, Amina let out a low, venomous hiss. “A snake,” she whispered, her eyes dark with a strategist’s fury. “You just invited a snake into our garden. His master is a known traitor, and you have given him command of fifty armed men.” “Better a snake in a cage where I can see it,” Lloyd countered grimly, his gaze already back on the map of Oakhaven, “than one hiding in the tall grass, waiting to strike.” He looked down at the map, his mind already shifting, re-calibrating for the new reality. The crisis in Oakhaven was no longer a simple, if terrifying, two-front war against a virus and the clock. It was now a three-dimensional chessboard, a game with multiple, hidden players. He had a biological apocalypse to contain. He had a secret demonic conspiracy to unravel. And now, he had a known political enemy, a potential saboteur or even the architect of the whole damn thing, operating within his own camp. An unwelcome, dangerous shadow had fallen across their desperate mission, and Lloyd knew, with a cold and absolute certainty, that the battle for Oakhaven was about to become infinitely more complicated, and infinitely more bloody. The game was afoot. Lloyd’s mind compartmentalized the threat of Captain Graph with ruthless efficiency. He filed the man and his fifty soldiers under ‘Potential Hostile Asset – Contain and Observe.’ They were a variable, a complication on an already chaotic chessboard, but they were not the primary threat. The real enemy was microscopic, demonic, and currently multiplying in the bloodstreams of the fifty-odd souls still clinging to life in the silent village of Oakhaven. Graph was a political problem for another day. The apocalypse was a problem for right now. The day was a grim blur of activity. Lloyd, maintaining his persona as the tireless ducal physician, worked with the ducal soldiers to reinforce the quarantine. He oversaw the digging of deep latrine pits, the establishment of decontamination zones, and the rationing of the remaining clean water. He was a whirlwind of pragmatic, life-saving logistics, his every command rooted in the hard-won knowledge of a lifetime spent managing crises. Amina, a silent and unnervingly quick study, acted as his adjutant, her sharp mind absorbing his methods, questioning his reasoning, and translating his terse commands into actionable orders for the bewildered soldiers. They were a brutally effective team, two brilliant minds working in perfect, unsentimental sync. But beneath the surface of their efficient partnership, a current of unspoken tension flowed. Lloyd was feeding her a carefully edited version of the truth, a plausible narrative of a natural, albeit vicious, plague. He could feel her analytical gaze on him, feel her mind probing the inconsistencies in his story, searching for the missing variables. She knew he was holding something back, and he knew she knew. It was a silent, high-stakes game of intellectual cat and mouse, played out over maps of a dying village. As night fell, a new kind of tension settled over the camp. The day’s grim, practical work was done. Now, there was only the waiting. The soldiers huddled around their fires, their boisterous camaraderie replaced by a hushed, fearful silence. The only sound from beyond the quarantine line was the ever-present, ragged chorus of coughs, a sound that seemed to mock the very warmth of their fires. Lloyd retreated to his command tent, not to rest, but to analyze. He meticulously reviewed the samples he had collected from the well, using his [All-Seeing Eye] to study the intricate, unholy marriage of virus and demonic essence. He was a scientist trying to reverse-engineer a weapon from another dimension, his mind a battlefield of biology, alchemy, and a dark, forbidden new science he was inventing on the fly. He was so deeply immersed in his work, lost in a world of microscopic horrors, that he almost missed it. A subtle shift in the night. A sudden, sharp intake of breath from a sentry on the perimeter. Then, a scream. It was not a scream of pain, but of pure, abject, soul-shattering terror. Newest update provıded by 𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙡•𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔢•𝕟𝕖𝕥 Lloyd was in motion before the scream had even finished echoing through the silent camp. His mind didn’t even have to process the sound; his body, honed by a lifetime of combat, reacted on pure, predatory instinct. Attack. The single, absolute command overrode everything else. He burst from his tent, a simple practice sword—his constant, unassuming companion—already in his hand. The camp was a scene of chaos, soldiers scrambling for their weapons, their faces pale in the firelight.